The year 1946 marked the discovery of the Tank Site by Robert F. Heizer and Edwin M. Lemert. Their work was synthesized in a paper entitled “Observations on Archaeological Sites in Topanga Canyon, California” (Heizer and Lemert, 1947). Here, so far as the small sample from test pits and surface collections permitted, they briefly defined the Topanga Culture, described the artifacts related to it, and indicated its possible cultural associations. Heizer and the senior author of the present paper were convinced that the Tank Site could fruitfully be further examined in the light of large-scale excavation. This was considered necessary to determine more closely the context of the Topanga artifacts, and the nature of the occupation here expressed. The answers to these two problems should contribute importantly to our understanding of the archaeology of southern California.

In the spring of 1947 R. L. Beals, of the University of California, Los Angeles, and R. F. Heizer, of the University of California, Berkeley, agreed to sent a joint party into the field the following summer. This coÖperation between the two institutions marked a new step in furthering the progress of archaeological research in California, and gave students an opportunity to participate in active field research. In June, 1947, the senior author, assisted by Miss Consuelo Malamud, a graduate student at UCLA, initiated excavation at the Tank Site. Undergraduate and graduate students from both campuses of the university as well as from San Francisco State College acted as volunteer workers. The results of this investigation have appeared under the title, “The Topanga Culture: First Season’s Excavation of the Tank Site, 1947” (Treganza and Malamud, 1950).

The activities of the first season should have brought to light a fairly representative sample from the site, but time imposed certain limitations, and much of what was uncovered only added to the list of problems. Further, the Tank Site as a unit was, presumably, known with some certainty, but there was little comparative material in which to frame the results. Therefore, three major lines of evidence remained to be investigated: (1) Additional excavation was necessary to verify the possible stratigraphy noted and to fill out the burial data and certify the typology established on the basis of the finds to date. Moreover, the Tank Site had demonstrated itself to be a deposit of unusual interest and importance; whatever added knowledge could be gained from it would be valuable. (2) LAn-2, just west of the Tank Site, required more intensive examination. From surface collections and test pits it was apparent that this site afforded clues to the interpretation and extension of the stratigraphy noted at the Tank Site, and it might represent a cultural development heretofore undescribed for the area. (3) A survey of the canyon should be undertaken so that the Topanga Culture could be viewed beyond its narrowly known confines. The problem was to gain an estimate of the number of lithic sites within the canyon drainage, and the points of similarity and difference between these and the Tank Site.

With the above three problems in mind, archaeological investigations were renewed in Topanga Canyon on the same coÖperative basis as the previous year. We are indebted to the following students, drawn from the three state institutions mentioned above, for volunteering their time and energies in behalf of the project: Richard Bachenheimer, Alan Beals, Hal Eberhart, Robert Farrell, David Frederickson, William King, Harland Kinsey, Joseph Kreisler, Donald Lathrap, Albert Mohr, Arnold Pilling, and Barbara Wyman. The authors acted, respectively, as field director and assistant field director. Agnes Bierman and Albert Mohr are responsible for most of the field photography, mapping, and surveying.

The general conclusions reached in 1947 were not substantially altered by the additional excavation. Nor did it help to solve all the dubious aspects of the Topanga Culture. As might be expected, it led, rather, to the formulation of further questions. However, new specimens and more complete data add fullness to this report, and it is hoped these will increase its utility for comparative studies.

With respect to physiographic location and archaeological assemblage, the Tank Site does not conform to other sites previously known for the general environs. Comparisons with the earliest horizon yet recognized to the north, the Oak Grove of the Santa Barbara region (Rogers, D. B., 1929), seem to offer the most satisfactory parallels as related to mortuary practices and milling activities; however, inasmuch as the Oak Grove Culture is not characterized as having a well-defined flake and core industry we are forced through necessity to seek further comparative data as expressed in the cultural inventory of the San Dieguito complex in the extreme southern coastal area of southern California and among the remains from the region of ancient Lake Mohave in the eastern desert. It is both interesting and a problematical that here at Topanga we find in a single cultural complex an almost complete record of all the recognized cultural elements typifying early man in southern California. In addition to this early-man complex there remains a residue of material which appears to be best associated with cultural traits characteristic of a “middle” time position. Such middle cultures can be tentatively identified with Point Dume, the lower levels of Malaga Cove, the Little Sycamore, the Hunting Culture of Santa Barbara, the Pinto-gypsum of the desert, and the La Jolla phases of San Diego although the latter are at present poorly defined. At the Tank Site (LAn-1) these traits, which are of “middle” position, have been named Topanga Phase II, and significantly enough they are confined to the upper 18 inches of the deposit. Site LAn-2, excavated this season, proved to be almost exclusively Phase II from top to bottom. Since these two sites occupy almost contiguous positions and with the distribution of cultural elements being such as it is, the suggested cultural stratigraphy observed in 1947 seems to be fairly well confirmed.

In addition to the economic and subsistence aspects we now know something concerning the socioreligious patterns as practiced at the Tank Site. Disposal of the dead is expressed in three forms: (1) primary inhumation in the flesh; (2) partial reburials under metates; and (3) fractional burials with interment of leg bones only. This variation in a single site is of interest. Formality appears present only in the first form; here all the bodies were fully extended with the heads orientated toward the south. Other than manos and metates, mortuary offerings were rare. In only one instance (Treganza and Malamud, 1950, burial 3) did we find what could be called a positive artifact association, that of a chert blade and a quartz crystal.

Artifacts of apparent nonutilitarian usage leave us with the convenient, but not to satisfactory, classification of “ceremonial.” It is only through inference that we can assume functional use in ceremonies of such objects as cog stones and a variety of stone disks. Since the spindle-shaped charm stone and the stone cogs and disks appear to be nearly mutually exclusive of one another in their distribution between central and southern California, it is not improbable that the latter constitute the “charm-stones” of the south.

Too frequently typological construct and metric measurements lead to sterility of interpretation divorced of any humanistic concept. At one time the Tank Site was occupied by a living culture and to some degree the occupants must have participated in activities other than those surrounding a fulfillment of a food economy. To this point it is difficult to explain large lithic concentrations consisting of unworked stone, broken metates and manos, core tools, and occasional sections of human long bones. Such occurrences are too large and too frequent to have resulted from mere chance, and for this reason we have given them the term “features.” The material content of these aggregations suggests refuse dumps of worn out and broken implements, but if so they would collectively have occupied a considerable part of the central living area. Conceivably their central location could suggest some ceremonial involving the concept of a “shrine.” That these features could represent some manifestation of the “Annual Mourning Ceremony” seems most dubious. Irrespective of the probability that the Mourning Ceremony is ancient in southern California the differences in cultural inventory and time between the Tank Site and the early and historic phases of the Gabrielino are such that it would be wishful thinking to imply any historical connection.

Earlier the Topanga Culture as depicted by the Tank Site has been characterized as largely constituting a seed-gathering economy. This characterization rests upon the presence of a large number of manos and metates as opposed to the decided rarity of projectile points and the near absence of mammal bone in the site deposit. Some what of a problem is the high ratio of core and flake tools. In American archaeology it has been popular to assume that flaked lithic assemblages automatically imply a hunting and skin-dressing economy. Possibly this assumption represents an Old World hangover with its overemphasis upon faunal associations merely because of their tangible nature as opposed to the lack of preservation of organic plant remains. In the light of all evidence, the situation at the Tank Site strongly suggests the possibility of alternative interpretations up to the point where we might consider a dual usage, or if the data permit, emphasize either a plant or animal economy.

During the first season’s excavations it was our belief that the area excavated at the Tank Site was, so far as we knew, undisturbed, and any conclusions reached rested upon that basis. It is significant to note that during this season, as a result of our regional survey, we contacted a man named Trujillo, a resident of Topanga Canyon for some sixty years, and from him we gained considerable information pertaining to the Tank Site and the Topanga Culture in general. Mr. Trujillo informed us that it was his practice for some years before 1920 to plant a small hay crop over the area we were presently excavating, and prior to the first planting he had removed numerous oaks and pointed out a now dead, native black walnut that was alive during his earlier days of cultivation. Mr. Trujillo was fully aware that this was an archaeological site and told us he was forced to move many metates and large stones away from the area under cultivation. This action on his part may account in some measure for the somewhat reduced number of large stones in the very upper levels of the site (0 to 8 inches). As the habitation deposit occupies the very top of a knoll, the frequent plowing must have increased surface erosion to some degree.

Unknown to us earlier were two springs near the Tank Site which possibly had some bearing on the original selection of this local. It was through Mr. Trujillo that these springs and several additional Topanga Culture sites were found. Mr. Trujillo, in his own way, had come to recognize these metate- and mano-bearing sites to be old and contrasted, as he says, “with the sites down along the creek where the soil is soft and dark with some sea shell and where mortars occur and the burials are all folded up.” Such characteristics are typical of sites occurring in the protohistoric and historic period.

Probably most significant of this season’s work was the partial excavation of LAn-2 located on the same ridge and about 350 yards below the Tank Site. Through our efforts here we were able to confirm the suspected stratigraphy in the Tank Site and, at least partly, define Phase II of the Topanga Culture. Of greatest contrast is the appearance of flexed burials and the exclusive occurrence of light projectile points. Although core and flake tools are still present, a definite shift occurs in the material from which they are made and the tools themselves do not dominate the cultural inventory.

From the Tank Site the artifact yield per cubic foot almost doubled that of the 1947 season. From the removal of approximately 2,496 cubic feet of mound we obtained 5,895 typable artifacts (all specimens and original data for 1947-1948 are now deposited in the Museum of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley) or on the average of 2.3 artifacts per cubic foot of dirt removed. Compared to other California mounds, this figure is exceptionally high. Only in the Sacramento Valley among Late Horizon sites where baked clay objects were manufactured as a substitute for stone do figures run correspondingly as high, and even here one has to consider a single class of artifacts rather than a full range as expressed in the Tank Site. One explanation for the great increase for this season is that most of our excavations were conducted in the shallow part of the site (0 to 8 inches) where the bulk of the artifacts occurred.